Superb Tone Thanks to Gibson USA Humbuckers

The Epiphone Les Paul Tribute Plus is an electric guitar that sounds just as stunning as it looks. Its glossy finish AAA maple veneer top and shiny chrome hardware make it an obvious treat for the eyes. But when you plug it in and hear the tone coming off its two Gibson USA '57 Classic humbuckers, you'll understand that its beauty is more than skin deep. Paying tribute to a legendary design with an eye to high-quality and detail, the Epiphone Les Paul Tribute Plus is a true value to be appreciated by guitarists of any stripe.

Solid Construction Means Solid Tone

The Les Paul Tribute Plus combines a solid mahogany back with a hard maple top to create an instrument of great warmth and resonance. The neck joint follows the deep-set design of the original Les Pauls, maximizing the surface contact between the neck and body and generating awesome sustain. The top itself, of course, steals the show with its AAA carved veneer, available in a variety of dramatic and gorgeous finishes.

A Fast and Friendly Neck Shape

The Les Paul Tribute Plus guitar features the SlimTaper neck with the shallow D shape that emerged in the 1960s, offering players a slimmer, faster design than the 50s-era instruments. With a 12-inch radius fingerboard and 1.68 inch width at the nut, the neck on the Tribute Plus is designed to feel solid yet playable in anyone's hands.

The Highest Quality Electronics Onboard

The authentic Gibson USA '57 Classic humbucker pickups in this baby mean that it delivers a classic tone right out of the case. It comes complete with the famous 'Patent Applied For' label on the base plate to indicate its famous pedigree. In the neck position you'll find the '57 Classic pickup, generally used by rhythm guitarists to get a more transparent and warm sound for chording or backup playing. In the bridge position is the '57 Classic Plus Humbucker that uses an extra dense enamel-coated coil inside, creating a slightly higher output for playing leads or more assertive power chords.

Both pickups are wired with 4-conductor wiring and individual push/pull tone pots to allow for series/parallel pickup switching. This means that your Tribute Plus has maximal tonal possibilities, even allowing you to get brighter single-coil-like sounds when desired.

Beautiful Hardware Accents

The Les Paul Tribute Plus comes complete with shiny nickel Locktone Tune-o-matic bridge and stopbar, along with Grover Locking Tuners to ensure great tuning stability. The ivory-colored frames around the pickups and the pearloid trapezoid inlays in the 22 fret neck stay true to the vintage styling.

If you have additional warranty questions, please contact the manufacturer at 800-4GIBSON

Epiphone Les Paul Tribute Plus Guitar

As Good As It Gets! The Epiphone Les Paul Tribute Plus electric guitar brings you the professional features of the Tribute series with the addition of a carved hard maple top and AAA maple veneer for an incredible look and tone! Featuring Gibson USA '57 classic humbuckers, the Les Paul Tribute Plus is an outstanding value that will bring years of playing enjoyment to guitarists at any level.

Body

The Les Paul Tribute Plus features a solid mahogany back with a solid, carved hard maple cap with Flame maple veneer to create the ultimate combination of warmth and bite. Everyone knows that set-neck guitars provide the best rock tone and sustain and the Epiphone Tribute Plus takes that to the next level featuring the original 'deep set' neck joint.

The solid mahogany neck with hand-fitted, glued-in joint extends well into the neck pickup cavity creating maximum neck-to-body contact and acting almost like one continuous piece of wood. Combined with the mahogany/maple body, the result is a tribute to Les' timeless guitar design with the sound that you can only get from a Les Paul.

Neck

The Les Paul Tribute Plus guitar features the 1960's SlimTaper neck with a comfortable D shape that was introduced and made famous on many 1960's era, Kalamazoo-made guitars from Gibson and Epiphone. This profile is thick enough to provide the stability and tone you want but thin enough to provide you with the comfort and speed you need.

Electronics

Capturing all the power and nuances of the Epiphone Les Paul Tribute Plus is a pair of authentic Gibson USA '57 Classic humbucking pickups. With its 'Patent Applied For' decal on the base plate, the '57 Classic and '57 Classic Plus are faithful replicas of the famous Gibson humbuckers that helped define the music of the late 1950s.

The '57 Classic gives you a tone that is warm and subtle with full, even response that doesn't hold back when you need that classic Gibson humbucker crunch! The '57 Classic Plus is the perfect bridge pickup and mimics humbuckers of that era that received a few extra turns of wire. This treatment gives the pickup slighter higher output without sacrificing its rich, vintage tone.

In combination, this pair of humbuckers overdrives tube preamps to a smooth level of saturation without becoming overpowering. Both '57's feature Gibson's special Alnico II magnet, vintage enamel coated wire, nickel plated pole pieces, nickel slugs, maple spacers and vintage-style, braided wiring. But this guitar is not just about recreating the old, it's also about looking ahead...just as Les himself continued to do throughout his lifetime.

Using 4-conductor pickup wiring, the Epiphone Les Paul Tribute Plus has two push/pull tone pots to allow for series/parallel pickup switching. The result is a Les Paul with huge pallette of tonal possibilities - from full-on, in your face humbuckers to quacky singlecoil-like sounds and everything in-between.

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"Best 'Bang for the buck' I've ever encountered in an instrument"

Sound:
Simply put, the sound is solid, woody, excellent. I made my twelfth guitar my first Les Paul because the time came to get a workhorse for those studio sessions where my other instruments (all very 'specific' sounding) weren't filling the niche. Since everyone wants the comparison: I've never laid my hands on a Gibson with 57's that sounded any better than this.
Feature:
Features is where this guitar shines. Practically everything I usually upgrade is already upgraded. Some of it is stuff I usually want to switch out on $800 - $1200 instruments. Absolutely stellar components for a $600 instrument -- and it comes with a great case. I'm confused as to how they managed to pull this off, even considering it is manufactured in China.I suppose the coil tapping is worth mentioning, but meh. It seems most instruments have this feature nowadays. I don't find it particularly useful here because anything less than a p90 sounds kinda wimpy in conjunction with how the LP feels, but that's just me. Provides a few usable extra options for cleans.
Ease of Use:
Relatively straightforward and simple. Plug it in, fiddle with the knobs, etc.
Quality:
Very well made. No visible blemishes anywhere. Hardware is all great. Routing was clean. Wiring looked well done. The top is perhaps subtler than in the photos, but that's a good thing imo.But this brings me to the only two issues that I had. The frets were horribly unpolished and the strings were absolute, unusable, garbage. No big deal, really, as these are things that are expected in this price range. I was just a little bit surprised because the rest of it was so well done.How they can upgrade literally everything on it and not spend a few extra bucks for strings... beyond me. Like I said, no big deal, though. Most people chop 'em off for a new-guitar-once-over anyway.
Value:
This is the best price to gear ratio I've personally ever come across. A very, very nice instrument out of the box for stupid money.
Manufacturer Support:
Gibson is pretty easy to deal with and usually can answer just about any of the Epiphone-related questions. I've never had to deal with Epiphone directly.
The Wow Factor:
The upgrades. Definitely can't stop talking about how great of a job they did with selecting components.
Overall:
One of the smartest audio gear buys I've made in 15 years.

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"Good Value, but be prepared to have a little work done to it"

Overall:
I was very impressed with the fit and finish on the Epi. I bought a "blemished" one, the Dark Cherry finish. I thought I would take a chance and save some money since I was planning on using this guitar for gigging, and it's just a matter of time till some scratches and dents are gonna happen. Honestly, other than a very small scratch on the neck pick up cover, I couldn't find any thing else that I would consider a blemish. There was a slight bit of bleed of the red color onto the edge of the binding, but you would never notice that unless you were scrutinizing the guitar and you were very picky. There were a few small scuffs on the case, but I'm sure I will add some more in the next couple of months any way. Nice case by the way, feels rugged and well padded with a nice tight fit. So overall, I think the "blemished" Tribute Plus was a very good value vs. a "brand new" one.
Over all, the guitar looks great, with a very nice match of the maple top pieces. Sometimes you see a guitar that the "stripes" on the maple are so far off from each other that it looks terrible. The finish is very nice, with some of the "3-D" effect you see in higher end Gibsons. You would be hard pressed to find another guitar this nice for the same price.
The set up it came with met factory specs I suppose, but was a little high for my taste. I did have some fret buzz from a high fret, so I had to have that one lowered a bit when I had it set up. Also, the nut was a bit high, especially for the low E, A and D strings, which caused a bit of intonation issues when fretting on the first fret, but again, I got that taken care of with a professional set up. The neck was perfectly straight, with no twisting, so we added just a touch of relief, and adjusted the bridge down a bit to lower the action. The moral of the story is, plan on taking it to a good luthier and having a pro set up and adjustments done, but you should expect to do that with any guitar you purchase anyway.
My guitar tech was a bit skeptical about all the features that the Tribute Plus was supposed to have, so we did some comparisons with a Gibson Les Paul and a Gibson SG, both equipped with classic '57 humbuckers. The wiring in the Epi was different, as well as some of the other electronic parts when compared to the 2 Gibsons, so he remains skeptical that the pickups are just exactly like those in a Gibson Les Paul with classic 57's. Then we did a sound comparison of the 3 guitars with the same amp settings. The 2 Gibsons seemed a bit brighter, and the pick ups a bit more responsive, but the Epi still had a very good sound. The pickups on the the Tribute Plus also seemed to start to break up just a tad sooner then the Gibson's did, but we both agreed that that the Epi sounded pretty close to its more expensive cousins. Also, the series / parallel switching on the 2 tone pots is a really nice feature, as it adds some more variety to the sounds you can get out of the guitar.
The only other things I can think of is that the Tribute Plus was not as heavy as a couple of other Gibson Les Pauls that we compared it to, which is fine by me. It still feels very solid and sturdy in your hands.The strap locks that it came with are junk, they shouldn't even bother including those, but that is no big deal, just go buy some real ones.

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